Knockout
by BlueNeutrino
Summary: Minutes after learning he's in heart failure and Dan pleading with him to go to the ICU, Eddie takes a stun dart to the chest. AKA what happened between Eddie being dragged away in the elevator and waking up at the Life Foundation?
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Ya know, if the movie *said* Eddie was in heart failure due to Venom, it really ought to HAVE SHOWN AS MUCH. So, here's a fix-it of sorts. It's entirely possible I've misremembered this scene since, while I've seen it twice, it's not fresh in my mind (and the UK does not get the blu-ray until February) but I wanted to write this anyway. I've tried to be more accurate that you'd typically get when it comes to the medical stuff, but I've also taken some liberties because, well, drama. And whump.**

 **I asked the audience on AO3 if they also wanted a follow up to this after Eddie gets Venom back, and the response was a resounding yes, so there will be at least one more chapter to come.**

* * *

A prickling heat creeps its way around the back of Eddie's skull and down his spine as he staggers along the hospital hallway. He stumbles, grasping more than once at the wall for balance while his feet refuse to keep a straight line, thrown off by the nauseating spinning of his head. With Venom gone, he'd expected an end to the heaviness and persistent pressure that had settled in his chest. Instead, it only feels tighter, lungs drawing breath too shallow and too fast, his heart a queasy flutter beneath his sternum.

 _No shit,_ he thinks. _I'm dying._

The sensible, self-preserving part of his mind is screaming at him to turn around and march straight back to the MRI room to let Dan check him into the ICU, but he's never been too good at listening to that. Instead, he stumbles the final few steps to the elevator where he stands, shivering and sweating through his clothes once again, while his thrumming heartbeat counts the seconds it takes to arrive.

The edges of his vision are turning grey when the doors finally slide open, delaying his reaction time by a second or two as he struggles to focus on who's standing on the other side. He's just about managed to process enough to think _oh shit_ when the next thing he's aware of is what feels like a sudden hard punch to the chest.

Eddie drops. His breathing ceases and suddenly he's on the floor, blinking, shaking, until a final burst of strength lets him lift his head enough that his eyes land on the stun dart protruding from his chest. The needle has punched deep through his sternum. Straight to his already failing heart.

 _Guess this is it, then. I'm gonna die thanks to some murderous fuckers from the Life Foundation._

He'd ruminate a little more on the irony of that had his consciousness not failed him, and his head dropped to the floor before there was even chance.

* * *

"Did you get it?"

Those are the first words out of Dr Simone Keller's mouth when Treece and his men lug the unconscious body of Eddie Brock into the back of the hijacked ambulance they're using for cover and throw him face-down onto a gurney. A more pressing question might have been, " _Did anybody see you?",_ considering they've been carrying an unconscious man in the exact opposite direction to the ER after shooting him with a tranquilizer no doubt on CCTV, but it seems most of the hospital's residents have their own problems to worry about. In terms of avoiding unwanted attention, the ambulance has served Drake's crew well thus far.

"We got Brock. It's _in_ Brock, isn't it?" Treece huffs, sitting himself in the back of the ambulance alongside Keller while his goons shut the ambulance doors and disperse to their respective vehicles. The red haired biochemist shoots him a glare, casting an anxious blue-eyed gaze over Eddie's unconscious form tossed unceremoniously onto the gurney with his limbs askew.

"It _was_ in Brock, last we knew. This thing can change hosts, remember?" As the engine starts up, Keller rummages among the equipment she's brought from the lab for a scanner, but already, just from looking at the state Eddie's in, she isn't hopeful. He's pale, drenched in sweat, and quite obviously in a bad way. Even tranqued, she'd expect to have seen some evidence of the symbiote by now. "Dammit," Keller growls, the device in her hand showing negative readings for signs of life. "It's gone."

Treece tenses. "What?"

"The symbiote. It's not in him anymore."

"Then where is it?"

"How should I know? You're the one who picked him up from the hospital. Maybe it's still there?"

Treece balls a fist, caught in a moment's indecision as he wonders if they should go back, then grunts in frustration as he just manages to refrain from punching a nearby medicine cabinet. "We don't have time to go off on another wild goose chase for it. Maybe he can tell us?"

"You'd better hope he can. I don't want to be the one to tell Drake we still don't have his creature. Do you?" She gives the hired muscle a filthy look before looking down at Eddie again, her mind half on how to begin interrogation, and then a sudden realisation dawns on her that makes her blood run cold.

 _No_ signs of life. The scanner had shown _no signs of life._

" _Shit,_ " she hisses, rolling Eddie's completely limp, pliant body onto its back before pressing her fingers to his throat, desperately hoping to feel a pulse. When she doesn't, she looks up at Treece again and snarls. "What did you do to him?"

"Tranqued him. With the sedative _you_ provided," he snaps back, but there's a sudden look of panic in his eyes.

"Well, without the symbiote, looks like it was too much for him. His heart's stopped."

There's a beat as they both contemplate what they're going to have to tell Drake, then Treece leans closer to Keller, lips curling back from his teeth in a deliberate look of menace. "I'm not taking the flack for this. You're a doctor. You fix him."

"I'm a _biomedical engineer,_ " Keller spits, uncowed, but there's a definite sense of urgency to her voice. "But fine. Guess it's close enough. Hand me that AED. Quick."

She gestures at the automated defibrillator mounted on the ambulance's wall, and suddenly feeling out of his depth, Treece flounders for a moment before finally identifying it and thrusting it towards her.

Keller doesn't take it. She's already shoved Eddie's sweat-drenched shirt up to his chin and has begun CPR. "Turn. The. Fucking. Thing. On," she grunts out between compressions, and he hurries to do as she says, fumbling to bat her hands out of the way when he leans in to stick the pads to Eddie's chest.

Keller steps back and the AED takes a few seconds to do its thing. Treece holds his breath, waiting for the device to deliver a sudden shock so that Brock's eyes will fly open, then all that's left to do is scare him with the threat of stopping his heart again until he reveals the location of the symbiote.

But it doesn't happen. In a cold, robotic voice, the machine advises _no shock_ and _resume CPR._

Keller does. " _Crap,_ " she mutters, not even looking up at Treece. "There's no heartbeat. At all. Epinephrine—there has to be an epipen on board this ambulance somewhere. Find it."

Treece doesn't even pause to think how readily he's begun taking orders from the scientist he had until now considered well below him in on the pecking order. He just doesn't want to roll up in front of Carlton Drake still symbiote-less and with nothing to show but Eddie Brock's corpse.

The medicine cabinet that had avoided a punching now gets upended as Treece searches frantically, desperately, not even knowing what he's looking for, and it vaguely occurs to Keller how much he would make an _utterly shit_ paramedic before he finally finds the epipen and thrusts it at her.

No, not even at her. He just barges her aside and, in a panic, punches the needle straight between Eddie's ribs.

For a moment, there's a lull. Time stretches out as Treece waits once again to see if it worked, and Keller simply stares at him in shock. When it still doesn't get the desired response, he looks up to see her glaring at him with what appears to be utter disgust.

"What, giving him one needle to the chest not enough for you?"

His hackles rise, but at the same time, the sheer contempt in her expression makes him feel a little sheepish. "Was I not supposed to do that?"

" _No."_

It doesn't matter. The AED, its pads still stuck carelessly to Eddie's chest, announces its second attempt to gauge his heart rhythm. Keller waves a scornful hand for Treece to move back, and this time, the device advises a shock.

Keller's sigh of relief she knows is premature, but it gives her hope that Eddie's heart is showing any signs of life at all as she reaches for the shock button and glares at that _fucking idiot_ of a security chief to stay well back. The machine delivers its shock. There's a brief zap without any grand display of Eddie's body convulsing or his eyes flying open, but then the AED goes back to assessing his heartbeat again.

A few seconds pass, and then, " _Sinus rhythm resumed. Cease CPR."_

Now Keller can breathe that sigh of relief. She reaches out to press her fingertips to Eddie's carotid artery, this time feeling the tapping of blood against her touch. Weak, admittedly, and unnervingly fast. But present.

With a heavy sigh, she rips the electrodes off of Eddie's skin then lets her eyes scan round the semi-wrecked ambulance, swiftly locating a stethoscope lying atop one of the shelves next to a blood pressure kit and reaching for it. She puts the listening ends in her ears and the business end on Eddie's chest, verifying that the pulse she'd felt corresponds to a heart that's actually alive and beating and isn't about to spontaneously quit again.

She isn't sure she can guarantee that last part. Eddie Brock's heart sounds like it's just run a marathon and is ready to stumble over the finish line and collapse, but Keller listens for ten seconds, and then thirty, and then a minute, and still she doesn't hear it give up.

Treece is watching her, his expression some combination of nervous and perplexed as if he isn't sure what to expect next, but then there finally seems to be some reaction as Eddie draws a deeper breath and a sliver of white emerges through the crack in his eyelids.

Instantly alert, Treece leans closer. "Is he waking up?"

Keller follows his gaze to Eddie's fluttering eyelids, tensing when that apparent attempt to open again falls still, but the heartbeat in her ears remains steady. "No," she says flatly, taking off the stethoscope. "But be grateful that he will."


	2. Chapter 2

The steady ticking of a green line rhythmically tracing jagged shapes across the glass is the only indication that the prisoner strapped into the exam chair inside the room is still alive.

It's been nearly an hour since they'd gotten Brock back to the lab, and he still has yet to regain consciousness. Keller is watching from outside the room, eyes flitting from Brock slumped in the chair to the output from the vitals monitor embedded in the window, biting her lip every time Eddie's heartbeat stumbles and the EKG falters. She is _not_ about to take the blame for losing the symbiote, dammit.

Treece, however, looks like he's managed to stay on Drake's good side. Gets to be inside the room, even, the Man In Charge while they wait for their captive to wake, and Keller feels a rush of resentment that Drake seems to value his thugs more than his scientists. Well. That was definitely true when it came to Dora.

She's just wondering if Treece is going to ask one of those scientists to inject Brock with a stimulant in his impatience when Eddie begins to stir on his own. He groans, eyelids fluttering, and tries to draw a breath. There's a strap across his chest binding him to the chair, and despite her utter indifference to Brock, Keller can't help but wince in sympathy at the pain he must be feeling in his ribs.

When he smashes his forehead against Treece's face, nor can she help the rush of satisfaction that twists a smile onto her lips.

(All the vitals on the monitor say he's still dying. The man's body is impressively resilient. She'd like to study it more.)

And then the Big Boss himself returns. This next part isn't going to be science, Keller knows, or anything that falls within the purview of the Life Foundation's mission objectives. It's just going to be the thugs in uniforms passing the baton to a thug in a suit.

Wrinkling her nose in distaste, Keller gets up and goes in search of some blood samples or post-mortem biopsies to analyse instead.

* * *

Eddie isn't sure if they plan on shooting him or just marching him into the woods at gunpoint until he drops dead of his own accord. The latter is really starting to seem not so unlikely. His chest feels tight, breathing strained, and every step sends another wave of dizziness through him that makes him feel ready to either throw up or pass out.

He hasn't felt right ever since waking up in that chair back at the lab. Since before then, even. He's felt sick ever Venom had first crawled its way inside him, _worse_ when Venom had left, and worst of all after being dosed with whatever it was they'd used to sedate him and then interrogated by an insane, murderous billionaire with an equally murderous symbiote up his ass. Eddie doesn't even know how he's managing to walk straight. His limbs tremble; his heart races.

It occurs to him he ought to feel afraid. He's marching towards what he knows will be his own death, yet it seems his body's resources are so depleted it doesn't even have the energy to summon a fight-or-flight response anymore. His heart may flutter, but it does little to actually pump. His legs may shake, but there's no adrenaline to actually stir them to run. His mind says he's terrified, yet his body hasn't actually felt it yet.

And so Eddie walks on, one foot in front of the other like lead weights until Treece behind him finally decides they've gone far enough. Maybe it's that strange lack of fear that persuades him to actually try it when the thug shoves the gun in his face, and Eddie uses the last of the near-supernatural energy that's been keeping him upright to attempt to disarm him.

Of course it doesn't work. In normal circumstances, Eddie might actually have had a shot, but he's dying. The best it seems he can hope for is delaying the inevitable.

Delaying it for just a few seconds proves to be all he needs.

The shadow moves through the trees, silently dispatching the guards one by one until it emerges in a black, humanoid form that opens its toothy maw to bite Treece's head clean off. The security chief barely has chance to scream before he's swiftly decapitated and his body tossed away, then the symbiote's white paint-splatter eyes are back on him. Eddie has barely registered what's happening before he finds himself being pulled to his feet and that very same mouth crashes onto his.

For a moment, he swears his exhausted, failing body just gives into the sheer shock, and his heart stops. Then Venom catches it. Tendrils of black hook into his brain stem, his nervous system surrendering control, and instantly it feels like breaking the surface of deep, freezing water and coming up to breathe. Venom seeps through his skin, entwining with the fibers of his muscles and sinking deep into the marrow of his bones until Eddie's fatigue dissolves into a euphoric high.

 _ **What did they do to our ribs, Eddie? All this bruising...**_

The thought is an echo in his head. No sooner does he hear it than the persistent ache in his chest evaporates, and Eddie inhales deep.

 _ **And our heart. So careless. I promised I'd fix it.**_

The slick mass of the symbiote is warm and velvety around his organs, no longer a heavy weight but a healing presence pouring life back into him. Eddie feels his heart begin to beat steady again. Strength returns to his muscles. His lungs drink in oxygen and pour out carbon dioxide with vigor.

When he finally pulls away and Eddie sees that it's Anne standing there, he feels like himself again. Better than himself. He feels…

 _ **Like us,**_ says Venom.


	3. Chapter 3

_**Some weeks later...**_

When Eddie wakes, the painful pounding in his head that feels like a pneumatic drill behind his eyelids immediately makes him wish he hadn't. He cracks his eyelids open and then regrets that too as a blinding white sears his retinas, making him twist away. Or twist as way as much as he's able. There's something binding his limbs.

If that wasn't enough alone to make him panic, the familiar weight of Venom trickling through his insides isn't there.

He squints, trying to look around as he comes to realise he's strapped down on what might be ( _shit, no, please god no…)_ an operating table, a surgical lamp shining in his face and the sharp smell of disinfectant thick in his nose. As his eyes focus, he realises there's a yellowish-brown fluid smeared over the bare skin of his chest, and off to his right, mostly in silhouette, someone is standing beside him.

Fear crashing over him like a wave, Eddie cries out and tries to struggle against the bonds.

The figure (more in focus now, female, dark-ish hair?) looks up from the clipboard she'd been writing on, and her eyes widen. "You weren't supposed to wake up."

Her voice is calm, strangely unthreatening, like she's just making an unexpected observation. Genuinely, she seems surprised. Eddie blinks, and begins to think the place he's in looks like one of the old labs from the Life Foundation. "What?"

"I tranqued you. Heavy dose. Guess with that symbiote in your system it wasn't enough. I'll have to make a note of that." There's the scratching of a pen on her clipboard.

Eddie tugs at his bonds again and glances down at his wrists. "If I wasn't supposed to wake up, why all this?"

"A precaution. Proved wise, too. I mean…" She chuckles softly. A little awkwardly. "Can you imagine if you woke up then in your panic got your hands on that?" Her eyes flit to a point by his head, and craning his neck, Eddie feels a renewed burst of fear as his gaze lands on the tray of surgical instruments.

 _This_ is _the Life Foundation,_ he realises, recognising one of the logos. _Please not one of Carlton Drake's crazy scientists..._

"Alright, lady, what do you want with me?" he demands, suppressing the urge to struggle again. "And where's Venom?"

"In there, I hope," she replies, putting her clipboard down and nodding at his chest. "Otherwise this would all be rather pointless."

"Then why can't I feel him?"

"Like I said, I tranqued you. Dose fit for a symbiote. Though, I didn't exactly gear it towards humans so no wonder you woke up faster."

Eddie swallows, and shuts his eyes as a wave of nausea washes over him. "You're going to open me up, aren't you?"

"Well...yes." She says it bluntly. "You weren't exactly meant to know about it. Thought I could get a good look at what's going on in there while you were still under."

That makes his eyes fly open again, staring at her like she's crazy. She probably is. "Well, I'm not under. And I'm not okay with this."

"Didn't think you would be."

Eddie abandons his restraint and resumes trying to struggle, but the physical restraints don't fall away so easy. "You're fucking psycho."

"Eddie…" The woman heaves a sigh, leaning over him with a look halfway between annoyance and concern. In the light, her hair is red. "Please don't. You're aren't even going to feel it. I'll put you under, out like a light. No different to getting a root canal or an appendectomy, and I know you've had one of those." He feels her touch the scar low on his abdomen, and his skin crawls. "I'll take a look around, make a few notes, then I stitch you up, your symbiote does the rest of the work, and you wake up without so much as a scar. Is that really so bad?"

He stares up into her eyes: plain blue with nothing behind. " _Yes."_

She huffs. Even disgraced and failing as the Life Foundation is, he suddenly realises she's still wearing their labcoat, logo emblazoned above the breast pocket. There's even a name badge: _Dr S. Keller._ "Why? Which part of that is really so terrible?"

"The part where _I don't consent to you slicing into me_ just to rummage around in my insides _."_

Narrow lips purse. She considers a moment, as if actually having doubts, then shakes her head. "Sorry, Eddie. You don't get a say."

"How do I not get a say?"

"Do you realise how much research we lost when the Life Foundation went under? That was all thanks to you. Without Drake, we had all these results that put us _right on the very edge_ of a breakthrough, and now we're about to slide right back. You and your symbiote are the only lead remaining. So, the least you can do is let me finish my work."

Eddie glares, not even trying to make sense of the warped logic in that. "You are just as nuts as your old boss."

"How?" Her nose scrunches. "I'm not trying to start an alien invasion to conquer Earth. I'm just trying to get a better understanding of biology and what makes you so _perfect._ "

Well, that was an unexpected compliment.

"The things you were able to survive in order to reach symbiosis, Eddie...it's beyond impressive. I have no idea how you're still alive. But I intend to find out."

Eddie watches with building apprehension as she reaches somewhere above his head for a piece of equipment, craning his neck to see, and then without warning he feels an oxygen mask being pressed tight over his nose and mouth. From the brief taste of the gas on his tongue, he can tell it isn't oxygen, and immediately holds his breath. He twists violently in his restraints in a vain effort to get away, but Keller tangles her fingers in his hair and grips tightly, holding him still. " _Breathe,_ Eddie. I can wait."

She will. And he knows she'll win. He can't keep up the fight for long before his mouth opens and the gas floods his lungs.

 _ **Eddie…**_

Even as his own strength is failing, he hears the voice in some distant part of his mind. It sounds weak, and scared, and Eddie can't be sure it doesn't slip away again the same moment he does.

As Eddie's eyelids begin to droop, the last thing he sees is Keller standing over him with a perfectly blank, emotionless look in her eyes. "Go to sleep, Mr Brock. Tomorrow, this will be nothing more than a bad dream."


	4. Chapter 4

Eddie has a ventilation tube down his throat and an IV line running to his arm by the time Keller has him fully prepped. She's scowling slightly, still annoyed that he'd woken up, but the situation had quickly resolved itself. After the dose last time had damn near killed him she'd tried to go easier, but it looks like she overcompensated.

The imprecision of the whole thing piques her—same with the speaker she currently has transmitting a supersonic frequency, low intensity sound wave towards Brock's torso, in the hopes that should the sedative fail, it will still keep the symbiote subdued. With all the other test subjects gone and her research woefully incomplete, she doesn't have more refined parameters.

Such is the nature of research, she supposes. Hopefully by the end of this she'll have something more concrete to write about. Maybe publish, though it's not like she would have gotten this past an ethics board. It's looking like she'll be spending several more months underground like she has ever since the Foundation collapsed, but she can tolerate it. For science.

Checking Eddie's vitals one final time, Keller is convinced the mix of anaesthetic gases in the tank is adequate for symbiote and host and quickly scribbles down the proportions. Watching the rise and fall of Brock's chest, confirming the accurate placement of the tube (so what that she's not a medical doctor? Drake certainly let her get plenty of hands on experience) she's almost taken aback by how different he looks to last time she'd seen him this close. True symbiosis. He looks healthy now, and not the dying husk he'd been before.

Healthy enough that the procedure should pose no risk. _Should._

Keller grits her teeth as she looks down at her equipment tray and again feels a prickle of irritation. There's no rational reason why Brock should be opposed to this. She has no desire to hurt him—it's actually easier for the both of them if she doesn't. If he could have just _stayed asleep_ chances are he would have woken up oblivious and never even known.

Well, too late. Best to just carry on.

Keller picks up the dictaphone she's left beside the surgical tools and speaks into the microphone. "Subject prepped. Vitals holding stable. No signs of distress to symbiote or host."

She leaves it recording on the table while she picks up a scalpel and efficiently slices into Eddie's chest. Everything's disinfected—equipment sterile, yellow-brown iodine clinging to Brock's skin—but even just the first few cuts make Keller's eyes widen, the bleeding little more than a trickle as the blade meets the resistance of something black and gelatinous. "Symbiotic matter in the subcutaneous layer," she records, her pulse picking up in excitement. "Going down to the muscle."

She carries on. Brock and Venom are out like a light.

By the time she brings out the sternal saw and rib spreaders, Keller is almost giddy with excitement. There's the audible creak of bone as she eases the spreader into the aperture she's created and widens it, but she barely even notices. All Keller sees is the glossy blanket of blackness being revealed as she pries open Eddie's chest.

"The symbiote is...deeply fused to the organs," she reports, staring. "Probing deeper."

She's so focused on Eddie's chest that she doesn't notice the tendril of black bleeding through his wrist, creeping silently along a fingertip until it finds a solid surface and inches closer to the machine she has controlling the supersonic pulse and gas flow of the sedative.

Deciding that her tools won't cut it now, Keller puts her instruments aside, then tugs off the nitrile glove she has cloaking her right hand. There's only one way she can know. She stares down at Eddie Brock's open chest, takes a breath, and sinks her hand into the black sea.

A soft gasp escapes Keller's mouth as the combined heat of Brock's body and the symbiote's dense, silky matter washes over her, clinging to her wrist the deeper she goes. Venom is warm, though a little below standard body temperature she suspects, perhaps heated somewhat for resting so close to Eddie's core. She's careful not to damage any organs, though even with the abundance of hollow space inside the chest cavity, she marvels at how the symbiote can even _fit._ There seems to be so much of it, not simply draped over Brock's organs but woven deep inside of them. She can feel him— _them—_ breathing.

Lungs are the key, she knows. Symbiotes can't survive in Earth's atmosphere without bonding to them.

"Taking a biopsy of lung tissue," she records, using her left hand to pick up a pair of curved scissors and reaching in. When she makes the cut, that's when she ought to notice: a sharp, focused ripple spreads through the symbiote like a pulse, surface tension momentarily heightening as if in pain, and then eases.

For Keller, it passes too quickly to even register. Maybe there's a moment where she blinks, wondering at what—if anything—she'd just felt, but then it's soon forgotten. She deposits the sample inside a test tube and turns her attention back to Eddie's chest, staring in awe.

"I wonder what your heart looks like…" She muses, not really for the dictaphone's benefit so much as her own. Last time, fused to the symbiote, it had been rapidly failing. She knows it has to be different now.

Once more, Keller eases her hand in.

There's enough time for her to feel it. Enough seconds pass where her fingertips brush the organ, housed in a protective shell of symbiotic matter and a pericardium flooded with black, and feels it beating. It's powerful, and healthy, and strong, and so much more than anything she'd been expecting that there's a moment where all she can do is cradle it in her hand and let it beat.

Then before she can do anything else, a sudden, crushing pressure wraps tight around her wrist.

Keller cries out, instinctively trying to wrench her arm back, but Venom's grip is tight. _What happened?_ she wonders briefly, only just noticing the power light has gone on the speaker, but it's too late to do anything before black tendrils rush further up her arm and then she hears a sharp _snap._

She screams. Her fingers have gone numb, wrist broken clean, but it's enough that Venom finally lets go and she staggers back. Her left hand flies to the tray of surgical tools, as if any of them would do her any good, but from deep beneath Brock's split sternum a sudden black tentacle extends and flips the table, sending instruments clattering to the floor.

Panic flooding her, Keller trips over her own feet and goes down. She hits the floor with an _ooph_ as she clutches her injured arm to her chest. _Shit shit shit_ is all she can think, at this point not even able to coherently wonder what went wrong.

Blackness is spilling haphazardly out of Brock's open chest, discarding the rib spreader violently so that she throws up an arm to shield herself from the hurtling metal, and then a tentacle finds the controls for the gas pump. She hears the soft hiss of the machine dying, and realises it's over.

 _Fuck._

She isn't looking when Eddie's eyes open, still vacant and dazed before Venom sweeps over his face to obscure them completely, but picks herself up and runs as fast as she can towards the door. Goddamn fingerprint scanner. Right hand.

There's no time to worry about the pain. Keller grasps at her own fingers to press hurriedly against the glass. It doesn't save her.

A glossy black hand slams against her own, shattering both scanner and bone, and she screams. The next thing she knows, she's flying through air until her back slams hard against the wall, then, too winded to even cry out, she crumples to the floor.

Picking up her head, through the haze of her vision, what might as well be a shadow stalks towards her. The hulking, muscular shape of man melded with symbiote reaches down and grasps her by the throat, lifting until she finds herself staring into blank, menacing white eyes.

That toothy maw opens, wider than should be possible for any non-reptilian jaw, and Keller braces herself. If she's about to meet the same fate as Treece, she wonders how badly it will hurt.

She doesn't find out. The opening mouth widens further, until the slick surface of the symbiote recedes and she finds herself staring into Eddie Brock's face. He looks out from beneath the hood of darkness with pure hatred in his gaze.

" _Please…"_ Keller gasps, her one good hand clawing feebly at his grip.

Eddie's eyes are hard, and she almost thinks she'd prefer to be staring into the inhuman white paint-spatter of the symbiote's. "Give me one reason not to."

The growling menace belongs to the symbiote. The voice is all his.

"Back when...Treece captured you..." It's an effort to speak, and she almost fears she'll pass out before she gets to the end. "Brought you to Drake. You were dying. Your heart stopped. I brought you back."

Eddie says nothing. He glares, eyes boring into her, and then they're hidden again behind a rippling dark mass that swallows his face. Keller shuts her eyes and braces for the end.

* * *

It's late evening, or nighttime. Eddie can't really figure out which and doesn't much care to as he makes his way as far as possible from the lab. He hadn't stopped to check for any of his things—not his clothes or even his phone or something that might have recorded evidence of what just happened, in a hurry to get the hell away from there as he lets a still woozy and confused Venom carry them as far as he's able.

They've gone a few miles by the time it becomes too much for the symbiote still shaking off the mystery sedating chemical, and, exhausted, he sinks back beneath Eddie's skin. Not quite all the way: a thick blanket of black lingers over the contours of Eddie's torso and arms, shielding his bare skin like a warm coat, and Eddie feels a rush of gratitude. He's almost afraid to look at his own chest.

 _ **Eddie?**_

Venom's voice is a rumble in his mind.

 _ **Why didn't we eat her?**_

"Because…" Eddie's mouth is dry and a bitter taste sits on his tongue. He doubts that's just the anaesthetic. "It wouldn't have been right, V."

 _ **She was a bad person, Eddie.**_ He lets than linger, then, _**We wanted to eat her.**_ **You** _ **wanted to.**_

Eddie swallows. "I know. But I believe her. She saved our life, so we owe it to her. This time."

Beneath Venom's protective shell, he shivers, and feels the symbiote squeeze him tighter. Their shared heart is still racing. He doesn't think it will slow for a while.

"I'm not sure we can go home tonight," Eddie says shakily, and is grateful when the symbiote seems to understand.

 _ **Say no more.**_

It isn't long later when they rock up outside a house on a hill where a particularly fluffy cat is watching them from the window, and Venom pulls back from Eddie's knuckles to let them rap on the door. There's still a horrible queasiness in the pit of Eddie's stomach when somebody answers and he sees Dan, sleepy eyes widening in surprise and dressed in pajamas. It's later than he realised, then.

"Hey, Dan." His voice is hoarse.

"Eddie?" The look of surprise quickly slides towards alarm as he takes in the state Eddie's in, wearing the symbiote like a particularly puffy hoodie with tired eyes looking out from his left shoulder. "What happened? Are you alright?"

"I'm...not sure." Eddie doesn't know that he can talk about it. Perhaps not to a surgeon, especially. He just knows he doesn't want them to be alone. "Do you think we could stay here tonight?"

Dan blinks, still bewildered and rapidly growing more concerned, but there's no hesitation as he opens the door wider to invite them in. "Of course."

 **A/N: I'm sure Keller may well have deserved to die, but with a confirmed sequel to** _ **Venom**_ **on the horizon, I'd like to keep her around. She may prove useful yet. Hope you guys enjoyed the read and a bit of a fix-it for one thing in the movie that didn't make much sense.**


End file.
